Track changes while you edit

You can easily make and view tracked changes and comments while you work in a document. By default, Microsoft Office Word uses balloons to display deletions, comments, formatting changes, and content that has moved. If you want to see all of your changes inline, you can change settings so that tracked changes and comments display the way you want.

Balloons show formatting changes, comments, and deletions.

Note To prevent you from inadvertently distributing documents that contain tracked changes and comments, Word displays tracked changes and comments by default. Final Showing Markup is the default option in the Display for Review box.In this article

Track changes while you edit

Turn off change tracking

Change the way that markup is displayed

Track changes while you edit

1. Open the document that you want to revise.
2. On the Review tab, in the Tracking group, click the Track Changes image.

   To add a track changes indicator to the status bar, right-click the status bar and click Track Changes. Click the Track Changes indicator on the status bar to turn track changes on or off.

3. Make the changes that you want by inserting, deleting, moving, or formatting text or graphics. You can also add comments.

Note If you use change tracking and then save your document as a Web page (.htm or .html), tracked changes will appear on your Web page.

Turn off change tracking

• On the Review tab, in the Tracking group, click the Track Changes image.

  

  If you customized the status bar to include a track changes indicator, clicking Track Changes in the Tracking group will also turn off the indicator in the status bar.

  

• Note Turning off change tracking does not eliminate the tracked changes in your document. To ensure that there are no more tracked changes in your document, be sure that all changes are showing, and then use the Accept or Reject commands for each change in the document.

Change the way that markup is displayed

Do any of the following:

• You can change the color and other formatting that Word uses to mark changed text and graphics by clicking the arrow next to Track Changes and then clicking Change Tracking Options.

  Note While you can't assign specific colors for changes made by different reviewers, each reviewer's changes appear as a different color in the document so that you can track multiple reviewers.

• You can view all changes, including deletions, inline instead of inside balloons that appear in the margins of your document. To show changes inline, in the Tracking group, click Balloons, and then click Show all revisions inline.

  When you click Show all revisions inline, all of the revisions and comments in the document appear inline.

• To highlight the margin area where all balloons appear, click Markup Area Highlight under Show Markup.